Rachel Johnson, “The Woman Who Gave the NBA

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by KIRSTE
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The
WOMAN
who gave the
NBA
A MAKEOVER
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When Rachel Johnson
speaks, the world’s tallest
millionaires listen—even if
the 37-year-old stylist is telling
them something they don’t
want to hear.
“Absolutely without question, I put them in their place,”
says Johnson of her clients,
who include NBA superstars LeBron James, Amar’e
Stoudemire, Chris Bosh and
Chris Paul. Last September,
PSM_R_JOHNSON6.indd 1
as New Yorkers were tripping
over themselves to welcome
Stoudemire when he signed a
$100 million contract with the
Knicks, Johnson was working on another acquisition:
Stoudemire’s ensemble for
Fashion Week.
After all, he was to be the
guest of Vogue editrix Anna
Wintour at the Costume
Institute gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For
o
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a Ma
g
Tadashi Shoji
gown, $608,
bloomingdales.com.
Jimmy Choo
“Brand” sandals, $795,
Jimmy Choo,
212-759-7078.
Ted Rossi cuff, $85,
tedrossi.com.
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Johnson dressed Amar’e
Stoudemire in Tom Ford for
the 2010 Fashion’s Night Out
show, where he sat front row
next to Serena Williams.
Diane von
Furstenberg
“Judith” gown,
$1,600, Diane von
Furstenberg NY,
646-486-4800.
Stuart Weitzman
“Steel” kidskin
slingbacks, $355,
Stuart Weitzman
stores. Ben-Amun
necklace, $295,
ben-amun.com.
R
Raised in
Englewood, N.J.,
Johnson picked up
her style sense from her
“fashionista” mother, who
worked in retail, and her father,
a Harlem-based drama teacher,
aactor
ctor and writer.
““Both
Both of them have great
personal
p
ersonal style,” Johnson
says of her parents, who
never married.
“My mom is all about
jewelry, sumptuous fabrics,
textures and colors. She made
all of my clothes when I
was little,” says Johnson,
who today, fresh from the
McQueen exhibition at
the Met, wears a mustard
skirt from John Paul
Gaultier’s collection
for Target, a graphic
Pret-a-surf T-shirt and
Valentino bag.
But it was her father’s
love of sports that inspired
her to connect the fluidity of
clothing with the movement
on courts and fields.
“I was always a tomboy in
that way. You see how tall I
am,” exclaims Johnson as she
stretches her 6-foot frame,
revealing an impressive wingspan and sinewy arms.
“I played street football
and could jump higher than
the boys. As long as I could
catch that ball, I was good,”
she says. Ironically, the
limber beauty never played
basketball—or any organized
sports, for that matter.
Johnson graduated from
Florida A&M with a teaching
degree, but entered the working world with an admin gig
at Essence, where she fell into
a social crowd of stylists who
worked with musicians such as
Mary J. Blige and Usher.
“I was a natural,” Johnson
says. After five years of learning the ropes while styling
music videos and the moguls
making them, she had a Rolodex full of high rollers such as
Pharrell Williams, P. Diddy and
Jay-Z.
But when a friend of hers
at the music label Def Jam introduced her to Chicago Bulls
guard Jalen Rose, her styling
career took an unexpected
turn toward sports.
tu
“These [NBA] guys were
wearing what their dads
we
and grandfathers were
wearing. It was bad
we
style being passed
down from generado
tion to generation.
I was like, this could
be something. I love
sports. So I targeted the
NBA,” says Johnson, grinning.
For eight months she tirelessly pitched sports agents,
trying to convince them she
was a necessary component
in the life and style of a ball
player. It wasn’t until 2005,
when Johnson strolled past
Jay-Z’s office at Def Jam that
the two worlds finally connected. Jay-Z was meeting
with LeBron James’ manager,
Maverick Carter, to discuss a
stylist for the hoops prodigy
and called Johnson in.
“[Jay-Z] was like, ‘I want to
introduce you to someone,’”
in
STYLED BY EMMA PRITCHARD FOR BA REPS, ASSISTED BY EMILY JENKINS; HAIR BY MONIQUE MITCHELL FOR HAIR RULES SALON NY;
MAKEUP BY JANE CHOI FOR MAC AT STOCKLAND MARTEL. KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES FOR CONDÉ NAST.
his designer debut, Johnson
dressed him in a dashing baby
blue slim-fit Tom Ford suit.
She recalls the moment
while sipping a flute of rosé
at the bar of the Four Seasons
in Midtown. “He did not want
to wear this suit. It was a departure from anything he had
worn before, but he was invited
by Anna Wintour to sit front
row at Fashion Week after only
being [in New York] six weeks.
He needed to make a splash!”
Johnson says, extending her
arms enthusiastically.
The 6-foot-10-inch transplant from Phoenix finally
relented and wore the suit
with a plaid shirt and tie. That
ensemble, along with others
that week, prompted a ringing
endorsement from Wintour
herself: “Amar’e looked wonderfully dapper,” she told Wall
Street Journal Magazine.
Later, the Knick was profiled
in Vogue’s March issue by the
magazine’s dandyish editor-atlarge, Hamish Bowles, who also
played Stoudemire in a hilarious game of one-on-one for a
video that was posted online.
But the larger story of how
NBA players became less
ghetto-fab and more Vogue-fab
should be attributed to Rachel
Johnson.
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Johnson recalls. “He’s like,
‘This is the stylist you need.’
It’s all who you know—and he
was that stamp of approval.”
A few months after James
brought Johnson into his coterie, NBA commissioner David
Stern enforced a businesscasual dress code for all league
players—giving her business
plan an unexpected boost.
Stern’s edict was a direct
assault on the NBA’s culture,
which by the ’90s had become
heavily entrenched in the hiphop world, where bigger was
unabashedly better. A taste for
’do rags, baggy jeans, oversize
jerseys and huge pieces of bling
by Jacob the Jeweler were status symbols. Tailored, classic
pieces were not.
“There are different uniforms for different occasions,”
Stern told ESPN. “There’s the
uniform you wear on the court,
there’s the uniform you wear
when you are on business,
there’s the uniform you might
wear on your downtime...We’re
just changing the definition of
the uniform that you wear when
you are on NBA business.”
Some players, like Sixers
shooting guard Allen Iverson,
famed for his tattoos and cornrows, openly griped about the
new policy, but other players
saw it as an opportunity to beat
Nicole Miller
gown, $1,100,
77 Greene
Gre
St.
Stuart Weitzman
“Steel” slingbacks,
“St
$355, Stuart
$35
Weitzman stores.
AllSaints “Veneza”
earrings, $75,
us.allsaints.com.
each other off the court too.
“It became a huge contest
to see who could be the best
dressed,” Johnson says.
She capitalized on this
appetite for competition by
turning hardball phenoms
such as 26-year-old star
LeBron James into unlikely
fashion darlings. For events
like his MVP reception in
2010, she outfitted him in tailored Ralph Lauren suits and
custom basics from understated French brand APC.
The streamlining of James’
aesthetic paid dividends when
he appeared on Vogue’s April
2008 cover dribbling a basketball while clutching supermodel Gisele Bündchen.
“When I saw LeBron’s
“Whe
[Vogue] cover, I cried,”
Johnson says. “He was there
too, and I was like, ‘Do you understand what this means? Do
you know how hard I worked
for this?’ It gives me a sense
of accomplishment,” she says
with satisfaction, crossing her
legs and resting her hands in
her lap.
James, for his part, is thrilled
with the results. “Rachel and
I are a team,” he tells Page Six
Magazine. “We have worked
hand-in-hand during the evolution of my image and style.”
Johnson pauses to recall the
rejections she initially received
when she started out, then
raises her voice emphatically:
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ/VOGUE/AP
After Johnson signed
LeBron James, he
appeared on Vogue.
“They would not pay me any
attention, girl. Now they’re
knocking down my door!”
Indeed, Calvin Klein, Tom
Ford, Gucci, you name it, are
all happy to lend looks to Johnson for her A-list clientele. In
fact, brands like Rag and Bone
even custom-make suits just
for her non-sample-size
devotees. Doing so requires
devo
at least
l
a three-week
turnaround—and adds a 30
turn
percent markup to an already
extravagant price tag—but
her following is willing to be
patient and pay up.
“There is no question. All
of her players are the best
dressed in the NBA,” crows
Stoudemire, a client for the
past three years.
But perhaps the best
endorsement of Johnson’s impact on the
industry came at the 2011
NBA draft on June 23.
Until then, nothing exemplified the dismal state of the
players’ poor fashion sense
more than the yearly selection spectacular, which often
resembled an annual Steve
Harvey look-alike contest.
But this year, from the front
row of Newark’s Prudential
Center, Johnson watched
as a parade of newly minted
millionaires approached the
stage as if it were a catwalk.
Seventeen of the 20 towering
athletes swaggered toward
their new team owners in
sharp, frame-hugging suits
from labels like Joseph Abboud
and Ermenegildo Zegna.
“I’m like, what’s going on
here?” says Johnson, recalling
the event. “I felt like the players were influenced by modern
men’s fashion instead of their
dad’s local tailor. They finally
got the memo.”
Signed, sealed and delivered
from one Ms. Johnson.
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